I recently installed on my iPhone an app called reQall. It's free, though you can upgrade to a pro version. It's basically a todo list app and memory jogger but it has a few nice features, one of which is that you can add items by voice and they get transcribed to text. This is handy when you are not very good on the virtual keyboard (I'm typing this on my iPhone, but at probably 10% of the speed I could type on a normal keyboard). The transcription is computer-aided, but the non-trivial bits are sent to people in India [or South Africa?], who are (the company assure me) "highly paid professionals" working in 8 hour shifts with appropriate meal breaks. Even the pro version of this service costs only US$30/year.
Similar apps use humans to transcribe texts from photos, or tag photos, or find items like the one photographed in the Amazon store and send you a link.
And of course so many companies these days use call centres located in India.
I wonder whether, if the ability to draw on instant third-world labour had been available 60 years ago, it would have made any short-term economic sense at all to invest in developing calculators and computers.
Posted via LiveJournal.app.
I'm just back from the opera, waiting for ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
homonculus to get back from the rugby. The opera was amazing and exhilarating! I ran most of the 2.5km back to our hotel, feeling invulnerable; like I could do anything with my smile. A random stranger on the way home sang some opera to me, just because I smiled at him.
Posted via LiveJournal.app.
I have my new mobile. I am more likely to carry it about than my old phone and more likely to keep it charged. Also, I have much more monthly call credit, so I will no longer resent having to check voicemail messages :-)
At the moment, I am quite pleased with my new toy.
Otherwise, a very quiet weekend. Ate Chinese take-away while watching "Gangs of New York" on DVD on Friday, and spent some time on Sunday morning making runs to the "dump" (composting centre) and back with piles of weeds and garden clippings.
On the plus side, I should have a Sunday free in Adelaide and am seriously thinking of signing up for a Barossa Valley day trip. Any tips on how to find a good one? Or should I try the Clare Valley or Adelaide hills instead?
It is interesting to note that despite all this travel, various other work-related travel over the course of the past year (to Darwin, Kununurra, and Adelaide), a trip to NZ at Christmas and our trip to Europe (UK, Turkey and Belgium), I'll still be nowhere near the number of frequent flyer points needed to reach gold status.
